Circumstances have changed at Penn State since early January. Football reality has certainly changed, too.

View full sizePenn State head coach Bill O'Brien during the annual Blue-White game held at Beaver Stadium.
JOE HERMITT, The Patriot-News

But Bill O’Brien? Penn State’s first-year football coach looks to be the same guy.

He sure sounded like the same guy, the exact same guy, during a series of Tuesday interviews in which he laid out his vision for Nittany Lions football in the coming years.

A vision that must be revised.

Now more than ever, O’Brien must sell Penn State football. To his current players. To future players. To the fan base. And, you could argue, to the country.

O’Brien did just that Tuesday, appearing on a conference call with Penn State beat writers and also doing a couple of national interviews.

The married 42-year-old father of two boys was confident, decisive in his answers, passionate, engaging. And mostly unflinching.

He sounded just like the guy who took the job on Jan. 6, leaving a comfortable life as offensive coordinator of the high-powered New England Patriots.

“I would tell them to renew their season tickets, I would tell them to move forward,” said O’Brien, asked what his message would be to a fan base that includes many who are struggling to stay positive in light of Monday’s brutal NCAA sanctions that included a four-year postseason ban, the loss of 40 scholarships over four years and the NCAA’s decision to allow any current Penn State player to transfer immediately and become eligible to play.

“I would tell them to turn the page and get on board with a new era of Penn State football. I would tell them to continue their belief in this fantastic university. ... I would tell them to remember that they’ve got a football here that’s working extremely hard for this upcoming season.”

You wonder how many hours are left in O’Brien’s day to do all this selling and soothing.

Consider that for the first month on the job, O’Brien worked two jobs, preparing New England’s offense for the Super Bowl against the New York Giants and acquainting himself with the Lions’ personnel, new coaching staff and administration.

Somewhere in between, O’Brien and his coaches worked late into the night on the most important phase of the college job — recruiting.

Then it was on to spring practice, where O’Brien devised a new, diverse offense — modeled after the Patriots’ version — and watched closely as his defensive assistants added newer, more aggressive schemes, an approach that was expected to ready Penn State for battle against a Big Ten Conference that includes much-improved Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State.

June brought with it former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky’s conviction of 45 counts of child sex abuse and more national scrutiny and horror.

This month has been no picnic. First, the university-commissioned Louis Freeh concluded PSU’s top officials and late coach Joe Paterno concealed child sex abuse allegations against Sandusky.

Then came Monday and a date with the NCAA and the organization’s president, Mark Emmert. With it came all those sanctions and the NCAA’s transfer ruling, which essentially means the current Lions, if they want, can become free agents and join any other program.

And yet O’Brien never flinched Tuesday when talking about Penn State’s future.

He saw some positives that came out of Monday. Namely, the Lions are playing football this season. And they’re playing on TV. Television exposure for his team, or what is left of it, is a huge deal to O’Brien.

“I believe in the chain of command here at Penn State,” O’Brien said, adding that as of early Tuesday afternoon, no current player had informed him of his intent to transfer out of the program.

“So, the communication process is me, to my boss [acting athletic director] Dave Joyner, to his boss [PSU President] Rod Erickson ... And I asked for two things:

“I basically said, ‘Let us play football and let us be on TV’. And at the end of the day, that’s all you want to do. You want to be able to play football, in a fantastic, beautiful stadium in front of passionate fans, and you want your fans that can’t get to the game to be able to see you on TV.”

No bowl games or Big Ten title game appearances for four years? O’Brien is attempting to put a positive spin on that fact of his life to his current players and 2013 recruits. O’Brien’s pitch is that there is something as good, or better, than bowls — playing home games at a venue like Beaver Stadium.

“We’re able to play football, and I understand that we won’t be able to go to a bowl game, I understand that,” O’Brien said.

“I really do, believe me. ... I’m not sure there’s many bowl games that are played in front of 108,000 fans. So I feel good about where we are right now because we do have the ability to play football on TV.”

O’Brien is six months into a five-year contract with no apparent early out clauses. Tuesday, he didn’t sound like he was thinking about leaving.

Appearing on The Dan Patrick Show, a national radio program, O’Brien was asked by guest host Bonnie Bernstein what percentage he would put his chances on being in State College five years from now.

“I’m committed to this football team,” O’Brien said. “I’m proud to be leading this football team.”

Reminded by Bernstein that he didn’t apply a percentage to his answer, O’Brien, a Brown graduate, deadpanned, “I’m not a mathematician.”

“This guy is two feet in,” Penn State men’s basketball coach Patrick Chambers said of O’Brien during a Tuesday afternoon interview on Fox Sports Radio.

“He is 100 percent committed. He knew what he was getting into, and he still wanted into this fire. He has been inspirational and enthusiastic.

“He is going to do something special, and he is going to keep this thing together.”

Because of the disorder, Jack cannot speak or walk without assistance, and he requires round-the-clock care supervised by O’Brien’s wife, Colleen.

“I talked to these guys [Penn State players] about adversity and about my own adversity,” said O’Brien, asked about his message to his Lions in the first team meeting after Monday’s sanctions were announced.

“I talked to them about what my wife and I went through when my oldest son was born and that he was handicapped. I told them life is filled with adversity, and the way you travel through life is the way you travel through adversity.

“That is how you are defined as a man,” Bill O’Brien continued.

“I told them to think about the [players] sitting next to them in the room. ... I talked to them about how proud I am to be their football coach.” 

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